Changes to My Patreon Page

January 30, 2016

I wanted to let everyone know that I have made some really important changes to my Patreon page. If you have already signed up to support me, as always, I want to say a huge thank you. I also want to ask that you please read this post carefully, as your contributions may be affected and you may want to adjust your pledge levels.

Birdie 2.0

Just a quick note here at the beginning to let you know that I posted the Birdie 2.0 development preview today for all early access Patrons. If you’ve not already pledged and are considering doing so, you can subscribe today and get immediate access.

Level Adjustments

First, I have modified the reward levels on the page. Previously, I had three levels: $2 would give you insider access to the work going on with my projects (more on that later), $4 would give you access to “Easter Eggs,” and $8 would give you access to early in-development builds so you can use the software before anyone else.

After seeing how things panned out over the past few months, and based on your feedback, I decided to simplify things a bit. Basically, I decided to completely get rid of the $4 Easter Egg level (this affects only one current Patron), and I also decided to lower the early access level to $5. I’ll explain my reasoning for these changes below.

No More Easter Eggs

The “Easter Eggs” concept was an idea I came up with one day while driving home from work that I thought was pretty clever. The idea was that I would embed secret input menus in my apps where users could enter codes to find hidden treasures (similar to the easter eggs that you could find on DVDs). I sent out two or three clues for Patrons to solve, but I’ve decided that it doesn’t make sense to continue this because:

Nobody seemed to be all that crazy about them

I’m not that creative and couldn’t think of that many things to hide in the apps

Having a hidden menu could cause confusions for users if they accidentally stumble upon them

Anyone could find the hidden codes just by looking at the source code

Really, to put it bluntly, the idea ended up not being kind of crappy, so I have decided to scrap it altogether.

Reducing the Price of Early Access

As I expected, it seems that what most people want is early access to development builds. I want to make it cheaper and easier for people to get what they want. For that reason, I am slashing the price of the the early access builds. I also intend to release more of them to give you more bang for the buck. I hope you all will agree that $5 per month is reasonable to have access to the bleeding edge and to support the continued development of open source apps.

Slack!

I haven’t been sharing all that much insider info with the people subscribed at the insider access level, and I feel pretty bad about that. It’s not from a lack of wanting to share, it’s just that until now I couldn’t come up with a good way to really give you the whole inside scoop.

But that’s when I had an epiphany! Why not create a Slack team? I have several projects that I need to keep track of (with more possibly coming in the near future), and integrating GitHub notifications and other software development processes in a central place along with all the development discussion makes a lot of sense. Plus, it’s a way for you all to share your thoughts and ideas with me, and to reach me if you have any concerns.

I have set up a Slack team and will be sending invites to all of my $2+ Patrons. Please don’t feel obligated to join, but if you are at all interested, I’d love to have you join the team. You’ll have full access to all the discussion and plans. There are channels for Birdie, Vocal, side projects, and even a channel to discuss Doctor Who. Because why not? Note: the invite will be for a team named Needle & Thread, so if you see a weird invitation to a Slack team you don’t recognize, it’s me.

An Important Note to Current Patrons

As always, I can’t thank you all enough for your continued support. I also want to apologize for shifting these levels around. If you had previously subscribed at the $8 level for early access, please edit your pledge and subscribe at the $5 if you would like. Don’t feel bad for lowering your pledge. If anyone should feel bad, it’s me. Also, if you were subscribed at the $4 level, please feel free to edit your pledge however you would like. I completely understand any time someone needs to edit their pledge or stop supporting me. No hard feelings, ever. To those of you who continue to stick around, and to those of you who are wanting to support me for the first time, please know how grateful I am.